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Title: Life After Patriarchy Author: Alnoor Ladha Date: MARCH 6, 2018 Language: en Topics: patriarchy Source: https://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/life-after-patriarchy-three-reflections-on-the-coming-revolution/
One Billion Rising is celebrating its sixth year of risings taking place
from February 14 to International Women’s Day on March 8. You can find
out more and join the movement here.
The last 18 months have been indelibly defined by the rise of a feminist
revival. The #MeToo campaign was a cultural matchstick sitting upon a
tinderbox of a patriarchal system built over thousands of years.
But there is more to it than this. If we look at the broader currents of
what is happening, we are seeing a profound shift in values away from
what has often been called dominator logic. This is not just a
re-balancing of masculine versus feminine values, but a redefining of
the central tension of anti-life versus life-centric values that are at
the very core of our global operating system.
Of course, there can be no tidy narrative of linear progress. Reality is
far more complex, haptic and entangled. We are simultaneously witnessing
the dissolution and apotheosis of late-stage capitalism, which in its
death throes is producing peak-hierarchy, peak-violence, peak-patriarchy
and peak-delusion (along with the strongmen embodiments of these values
in world leaders such as Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and Modi).
I do not pretend to have answers for where we are going or even what the
shift from the male-dominator logic will mean, but I would like to offer
three reflections that might provide a different lens from which to view
the coming transition. These ideas were triggered by seeing the powerful
My Revolution video by the social movement One Billion Rising.
Capitalism And Ppatriarchy Are Mutually Reinforcing
As we begin to understand the consequences of the 5,000-year spread of
patriarchal logic – from species extinction to eco-systems collapse to
perpetual war – a more constellational worldview is forming. Climate
change, increasing inequality and rampant poverty are not
“externalities” of a well-functioning system, as the economists would
have us believe, but rather the logical outcome of a set of rules, norms
and cultural practices that stretch back to our invention of agriculture
and creation of the first city-states.
History builds upon itself in reinforcing feedback loops. We cannot
create a society built on masculine values – including rewarding
competition, aggression, violence, rationalism and domination – and
expect the outcome to be anything else than our current plight as a
civilization on the brink of existence.
Although the traditional essentialism of ideas such as “masculinity”
versus “femininity” are reductive, they can be useful shorthand when it
comes to identifying general tendencies. The upshot being that masculine
values are primarily responsible for the historical creation of the
violent, patriarchal culture that gave birth to proto-capitalism and
then capitalism itself.
The economic operating system has been programmed to extract more,
consume more, and control more. The system rewards those who best serve
its prime directive: to increase capital. This is the epitome of
dominator culture, which rewards men exponentially. As such, we as men
must go beyond being ‘allies’ by recognizing and calling out patriarchy;
we must become allies in actively dismantling the system and helping to
usher in post-capitalist, life-centric values. This is not simply a
moral requirement or a form of redemption. It is the necessary
pre-condition to ensure that we can maintain Life on this planet.
Patriarchy Is A Mind-Virus
When most people think about memes they think of LOL cats or other viral
internet memes. But the technical definition of a meme is a unit of
cultural meaning. Richard Dawkins, who coined the term in his 1976 book
The Selfish Gene says, “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene
pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate
themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain, via a
process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”
If we understand patriarchy in this broader sense, as a memetic virus
that moves from host to host, mutating to suit its various cultural
environments, we start to understand what we’re up against. Although
patriarchy is institutionalized through systems and structures, it is
also latent in the inner structures of the mind. That means patriarchy
is not solely gender-determined. One only needs to think of the
archetype of the ambitious Western corporate female or NGO bureaucrat to
see how patriarchal memes are internalized and re-propagated.
We also see this in progressive circles where people who are versed in
power dynamics believe they are immune to the memetic virus of
patriarchy. However, the thought-form mimics its own nature – it is
extremely cunning, transforming itself into other forms of aggression.
Even the desire to castrate men for their crimes is a form of
perpetuating the virus of patriarchy (however much they may deserve it).
One may argue that this is somehow the shadow of feminism, but if you
accept the memetic perspective, even the more extreme feminist reaction
is in fact the shadow of patriarchy.
No one is immune to the virus. Everyone who has been affected by
globalized capitalist culture has been infected. To varying degrees, we
are all carriers of dominator logic.
The Revolution Is Not Just Political
In order to create the antigen to the patriarchy virus that exists
within us, we must address our inner world. This is a frightening
proposition to most, and often regarded as irrelevant to the political
process. But if disembodied, rationalist men, largely socialized in the
dominant culture, are disproportionately powerful agents of creating
modern reality, then surely their spiritual and psychological
development is a key factor in creating the possibility of what is to
come.
This is not to say that we should not focus on the material aspects of
creation such as building new forms of political economy, but rather, we
must complement building new infrastructure with re-wiring the inner
world of the male psyche. This can take many forms including mindfulness
practices, psychotherapy, men’s groups, working with psychedelic
substances in ceremonial settings, etc. It may also mean rethinking the
very fabric of our relationships – whether they be romantic
relationships, our relationship to our own body, our community
structures and our relationship with the living planet.
Whatever the avenue, the goal is to de-school the mind from the
patriarchal dominator logic that is at the heart of capitalism.
Patriarchy and capitalism are intertwined and interdependent
thought-forms; they co-evolved, after all. We will not transcend
capitalism until we dismantle the patriarchy. And we will not transcend
patriarchy until we dismantle capitalism. Importantly, we will not have
a chance at either if we do not first become aware of how the mind-virus
of patriarchy operates within our own psyches. The challenge that lies
ahead of us is as much political as it is metaphysical. It’s as much
about storming the 21^(st) century Bastilles as it is about dismantling
the inner Trump that lies within us all.